Passover (Exodus 12:1-14)
Big Idea: We need deliverance, and God both responds and reminds us of his deliverance.
If you asked me what Christianity is all about, I could take you to one of the four gospels in the New Testament. The four gospels tell us, from a number of different perspectives, about the life of Jesus. It’s a good place to start to learn about Jesus and what his life, death, and resurrection mean to us.
But I could also turn to other places in Scripture. One of them would be the fifth gospel. You have the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are traditionally called the fourth gospel. But some have suggested that you also have a fifth gospel: the gospel according to Moses. They’re referring to the book of Exodus. Both Exodus and the gospels recount the birth and ministry of a mediator that God raises up to save the people. Both focus on a covenant that God makes with his people: an agreement that God makes with his people that forms a new way for his people to relate to him.
If you want to know what Christianity is all about, Exodus is a great place to look. In fact, you can look in a single, surprising chapter of the Bible: Exodus 12. In this chapter we have before us, we have pretty much everything we need to know about ourselves and about God. It’s enough to change your life. It’s enough to help you grasp the overarching story line of the Bible. It gives you a rich understanding of who you are and what God wants from you and has done from you. This chapter on the Passover tells us what we need to know about God and about ourselves.
So let’s look at this passage, because if we look carefully, we discover three things that all of us need to know about God and about ourselves.
We Need a New Beginning
What do you see as the most important date in your life? Is it your birthday? Your wedding anniversary? The anniversary of some other important date in your life?
We all have dates that we observe annually. I’ll bet that some of you have surprising dates that nobody else knows about, but they’re significant to you because something big happened on that date, and as long as you live you’ll never forget it. That event marked you. You’ll never be the same again, and you’ll remember it the rest of your lives.
When Exodus was written, cultures varied in how they organized their calendars. Some started the new year in the Spring. It was more common, though, to organize the year around the harvest. The end of harvest in the Fall would mark the end of the year and the beginning of a new one. Why? Because when your whole life is organized around farming, then that becomes the thing that shapes your life and your time.
In this passage, though, God changes all of that. In this passage God gives his people a new beginning. He’s redefining their whole calendar, giving them a new reference point that becomes more important than anything else. Their whole reality is redefined around his event.
Verses 1-2 and 14 are bookends to this passage:
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you… (Exodus 12:1-2)
…This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. (Exodus 12:14)
Here’s what he’s saying: We need a new beginning that must never be forgotten. We need our reality redefined by a single, decisive event that becomes the most important thing about us. From now on, this will be the thing that defines your year. It will be the most important thing about you. Just as Canadians celebrate July 1, 1867, and Americans celebrate July 4, 1776, Israel would celebrate this day forever. It’s the day that God gave them the deliverance that they needed.
You may ask: what is this date for the Christian? We don’t need to guess. The night before Jesus died, he celebrated the Passover with his friends. As he celebrated the Passover, he took some bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He then took the cup, and said, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20). At this Passover meal, Jesus told us that he was offering us a new beginning.
Jesus’ death for us is the beginning of months, the first month and the defining date for the rest of our lives. It’s a memorial day for us. It’s why Jesus told us to “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:25).
We need a new beginning. The gospel according to Moses tells us that God has given us that new beginning, a fresh start in which he has delivered us, and nothing will ever be the same. As one of my friends says, “Christianity isn’t about making nice people. It’s about making new people.”
I wonder if you have experienced this new beginning? I wonder if you’ve experienced what Christian, the main character in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress experienced?
He ran till he came to a small hill, at the top of which stood a cross and at the bottom of which was a tomb. I saw in my dream that when Christian walked up the hill to the cross, his burden came loose from his shoulders and fell off his back, tumbling down the hill until it came to the mouth of the tomb, where it fell in to be seen no more.
He continued looking at the cross until tears began streaming down his cheeks. As he stood looking and weeping, three Shining Ones came to him and greeted him with, “Peace be with you.” Then the first said to him, “Your sins are forgiven.” The second stripped him of his rags and dressed him with new clothing. The third put a mark on his forehead and gave him a scroll with a seal on it. He told Christian to review it often as he went on his way and at the end of his journey to turn it in at the Celestial Gate. After this they went their way.
If you have never come to the cross and had your burden removed, and then being forgiven and reclothed, then you can experience that new beginning today. Come to Jesus even right now. Confess your sins before him. Ask him to do for you what you can’t do for yourself. You can have that new beginning right now if you come to Jesus. If you want more information, please ask someone around you, or talk to me at the door. It would be our privilege to tell you about how you can experience a new beginning today.
We need a new beginning. But that’s not all we learn in this passage.
We're All the Same
You know the formula. In every movie, in every novel, there is a good guy and a bad guy. The good guy isn’t perfect. He or she has to struggle so we can relate to them. But they have to be basically good and likable. And the bad guy isn’t usually all bad, but it’s clear that one is basically good and the other is basically a villain. That’s the way that all stories work.
Exodus has been setting us up to see Israel as the good guys and Egypt — particularly Pharaoh — as bad. Israel is the nation that God has chosen. Egypt is the oppressor, keeping them in slavery. Pharaoh refuses to let them go. He keeps making life harder for them.
What’s interesting in this passage is that God levels the playing field. God is about to judge Egypt finally and decisively. In the previous chapter, God told Moses what he was about to do:
About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. (Exodus 11:4-6)
God is going to finally deal with the bad people. What’s interesting is what God says tells them to take seem steps to prepare themselves, and if he takes them then they will be spared. He says in Exodus 12:13: “And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.”
In other words:
The point is this: the Israelites deserve the judgment of death just as much as the Egyptians. If this was simply a story of political liberation, then Israel would be the innocent victims. They wouldn’t need to fear judgment. But the truth is that they were sinners deserving of death. The Israelites had to daub the blood on the doorposts precisely because they were as guilty as the Egyptians, and so needed a substitute to die in their place if they were to avoid the judgment of death. The blood is daubed around the doors not because God can’t tell who is inside the house, but because he can! He knows there are sinners inside. (Exodus For You)
We are all the same. There are no good people. All of us have sinned. All of us have fallen short of God’s glory. There is nobody who is righteous before God. Therefore there is no room for pride toward anyone else, because we have all been corrupted by sin.
Years ago a pastor traveled to Ecuador and spent a couple of weeks traveling in the mountains. The Quechua Indian people he met there lived amidst the most mind-numbing squalor. The disease and disfigured bodies were heartbreaking. The bugs and stench were everywhere. People were living in a hole in the ground and calling it a house. They were feeding on rotten food and prizing garbage as possessions. But they didn't know it. Why? Because everyone lived that way. They had never been given a picture of what it means to be a genuinely healthy human being. They did not know what an abundant life truly looked like.
That is our problem, too. It's the reason we think of ourselves as largely innocent people—people who have little to do with bringing about the Cross of Christ. That’s why everyone deserves judgment. We all do. That’s why God is right when he judges sin. Nobody will be able to argue on the Day of Judgment that God has judged us wrongly.
But this is also why there’s hope for all of us. Because we’re all sinners, there’s hope for all of us in the deliverance that Jesus offers. Run to him today, because there’s grace for you.
We need a new beginning. We’re all the same. Then we learn one more thing:
We Need a Substitute
In the first view verses, God gives specific instructions about how Israel is supposed to celebrate the Passover. They’re to take a lamb. The lamb has to be perfect, without blemish. At twilight, the entire nation is told to kill their lambs together. They are take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts and lintel of the house, and then they’re to eat the lamb in haste prepared to flee at that very moment.
Why does there have to be a lamb without blemish? And what’s with the blood smeared on the posts? It actually has to do with what happens that night. Verse 29 says, “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock.” Every house experienced death. The death count was the same. The only difference: who died? A lamb or a child? The lamb became a sacrifice, a substitute. The lamb took the place. It died the death in someone else’s place. It paid the penalty for the judgment that the house rightly deserved.
Of course, we all know that a lamb — even a spotless lamb — is a fair exchange for a human life. We need a better substitute, someone who can really take our place. That’s why John the Baptist looked at Jesus one day and said, ““Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). There was a Lamb who is spotless, who is able to act as our substitute, taking the death that we deserved!
Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, said:
…you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:18-19)
Make no mistake: all of us will be judged. We all deserve judgment, and judgment will happen. The only question is whether we will pay that judgment ourselves, or whether a substitute will take our place, offering his life for ours, and fully satisfying the judgment that rightfully belonged to us.
We need a new beginning. We’re all the same. We need a substitute. We need deliverance, and God responds with deliverance. He gives us the new beginning that we need. He provides the substitute so that we can be free from the judgment of God. He delivers us.
God not only responds by delivering us, but he reminds us. In fact, in a few minutes we’re going to allow him to remind us once again as we celebrate part of the Passover meal as Jesus commanded us. Just as God gave Israel the Passover, he’s given us communion so that we never forget. We’re going to remember: this is what Jesus has done for us.
Friends, this is the gospel according to Moses. These fourteen verses contain everything we need to know to change not just our lives, but our eternity. If you have trusted in Christ, rejoice in what he’s done for you. If you haven’t, then come to the cross today. Lose your burdens. Be forgiven. Let him reclothe you. Let today be your new beginning, and join us in praising the spotless Lamb who give his life for ours.
